News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by cm2187 on Thursday October 15, 2020 @05:51PM (#24794538)
We are not talking about next video suggestion here. We are talking about censoring direct messages or feeds people deliberately follow. Tech companies inserting their political bias in direct communications. Not amplification.
Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by tayo42 on Thursday October 15, 2020 @06:06PM (#24794710)
You're still free to send a text, write a letter, call. Twitter and facebook aren't public utilities.

I saw an interesting comparison the other day. If this was a message board from the early 2000s, and the moderator was deleting posts, you move on, not throw a giant fit about free speech using some one else server.

Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by josephg on Thursday October 15, 2020 @06:27PM (#24794948)
Twitter and facebook have become an internet "public square", kept in monopolistic power by network effects and compulsion mechanisms stronger than casinos.

Insofar as they're monopolies, they should be managed by the people as if they were a public space.

Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by verdverm on Thursday October 15, 2020 @07:26PM (#24795568)
There is prior case law to support this idea.

This would be similar to the central area of a mall or when companies provided housing to workers to prevent unionization efforts. Both places were upheld as places where the First Amendment must be upheld, despite private ownership.

Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by swixi on Thursday October 15, 2020 @09:19PM (#24796388)
By what objective metric(s) do you determine that a particular website has become an internet "public square"?
Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by RonanTheGrey on Thursday October 15, 2020 @10:42PM (#24796896)
Ok. Where's the internet public square? Please show me the way because I think I forgot my map.
Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by mensetmanusman on Thursday October 15, 2020 @10:22PM (#24796763)
When the president of a country is using it.
Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by tayo42 on Thursday October 15, 2020 @11:42PM (#24797218)
Why does the unwelcomed network want to stay on Twitter. Why don't they make their own news feed site to post and comment on?
Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by saxonww on Friday October 16, 2020 @04:00AM (#24798660)
Because it's not about being able to say what they want on a particular platform, it's about saying what they want where everyone else will hear it.

A lot of people look at this issue and see two groups fighting over it. There are (at least) three groups though: for, against, and undecided. This is really a fight about how to convince the undecided, so solutions like "go make your own platform" aren't desirable; undecideds aren't going to know about the new platform, and won't automatically appear en masse on it, so it actually makes reaching them more difficult.

Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by hackerfromthefu on Friday October 16, 2020 @03:28AM (#24798471)
If that's a genuine question .. .. .. you can research on the term network effects.
Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by cscurmudgeon on Thursday October 15, 2020 @10:15PM (#24796725)
> Twitter and facebook aren't public utilities.

> You're still free to send a text, write a letter, call

Exactly. This is why free college and free medical care are not necessary.

You can learn from public libraries and go to the forest and apply herbs when you are sick.

Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by tayo42 on Thursday October 15, 2020 @11:46PM (#24797237)
We didn't take over Harvard and make a public university. They co exist. Do we need a publicly run social media?

Though tbh I'm not totally sure what point you're trying to make.

Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by zaroth on Thursday October 15, 2020 @06:06PM (#24794714)
This is a crucial point. We are not talking about someone coming to my house and blaring Tweets with a bullhorn.

If I follow @NYPost then I want to hear what they tweet. Twitter may have every right to censure them, but it’s the wrong thing to do, and people are rightly incensed about it.

If I want to retweet a @NYPost article to my followers that is my business. And my followers can gladly listen or unfollow.

Twitter’s faux rationale about “hacked materials” sticks coming just days after NYTime’s story on Trump tax returns.

If these monopolistic social networks want to interfere in public & private messages on their platform to the benefit of particular political candidates they shouldn’t be doing it with the benefit of Section 230 immunity and/or should be scrutinized for making campaign contributions in-kind, like how National Inquirer got hit with charges for their buy&bury on Trump’s affair.

Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by tzs on Thursday October 15, 2020 @06:40PM (#24795101)
If you want to hear what the NY Post has to say, you can sign up to their email newsletter [1]. You can forward those emails to those who care what you like.

In regards to section 230, the whole point of it was to allow platforms to selectively restrict content from third parties. Before 230 some courts had ruled that if they restricted content from any third party, then they shared in liability for any third party content they did not restrict. So if I deleted spam for boner pills from my chess BBS, but did not delete someone’s accusation that a particular chess book was plagiarized I might be sued by the book author for libel. To ensure I would not be liable for that kind of thing, I would have to let the boner pill spam stay, along with anything else that was not illegal.

[1] https://email.nypost.com/

Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by hooande on Thursday October 15, 2020 @06:32PM (#24795005)
Twitter has made themselves clear on this. They're going to censor content they don't like, even in direct communications.

Use another platform if you don't like it. If you can't do that because all of the content producers and your friends have decided that twitter's level of censorship is ok, then you're just out of step with the rest of society.

It's like complaining that Coca Cola is an evil company and you hate them. If everyone else but you still likes Coke then your view on their practices, however valid it may be, won't be relevant

Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by zaroth on Thursday October 15, 2020 @06:47PM (#24795196)
It’s totally fine by me if they want to take on the legal liability of being a publisher.

I think it goes against the stated purpose and core mission of their platform. So perhaps they are lying to their users, and even to themselves.

> The mission we serve as Twitter, Inc. is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Our business and revenue will always follow that mission in ways that improve – and do not detract from – a free and global conversation.

It also may be an illegal campaign contribution in some cases.

Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by hooande on Thursday October 15, 2020 @07:42PM (#24795711)
wouldn't this leave you in a worse situation? say twitter becomes a publisher (whatever that means) and gets sued out of business. then you still won't be able to follow @NYPost or retweet content to followers.

I'm curious, how do you think twitter becoming a publisher would help you to accomplish your stated goals?

Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by username90 on Thursday October 15, 2020 @07:50PM (#24795780)
Twitter can't afford to become a publisher, so if the law didn't let them do what they do now without being a publisher it would force them to stop. Currently they get to eat and keep the cookie.
Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by heurist on Thursday October 15, 2020 @08:42PM (#24796139)
Twitter and Facebook are in a no-win situation. Remove this content and they are punished by the right removing section 230 protections. Allow it and the left calls them destructive monopolies and breaks them apart. It seems they have chosen to halt the spread of murky 'October surprise' claims on their platforms rather than repeat the course of October 2016. I can't blame them (and agree with their decision).
Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig... by RonanTheGrey on Thursday October 15, 2020 @10:47PM (#24796921)
> Remove this content and they are punished by the right removing section 230 protections. Allow it and the left calls them destructive monopolies and breaks them apart.

This seems to suggest a larger solution -- that these platforms do actually have within their power to implement.

Stop helping those two bickering ninnies by taking sides, and instead use the huge bullhorn society has handed them by screaming, "Shut up the both of you, stop bickering and maybe help the people you were elected to help!"

Who is right and about what are always less important than simply helping people. There is SO MUCH that is being left undone because we endlessly want to debate single issues for literally DECADES while people die in the streets.

Leadership was abandoned long ago and these gigantic bully pulpits could right the ship and instead they are being used as game pieces by their partisan owners. It's... sad to watch.